imperfect prayers

Richard Carr

Poetry $12.00

Praise for Imperfect Prayers

"Sharp, pointed, the poems confront the sacred and the profane and find them often to be made of the same elements, the same common dust. The mode here is not devotional, but confrontational, a contemporary Jacob wrestling with the questions of the flesh and the spirit."

--Eric Pankey, author of The Pear as one Example: New and Selected Poems 1984-2008

"Neither glib dismissal nor giddy swoon, these poems perform a serious coming to grips with the God Who Is. This is unusual and compelling theodicy, and--I daresay--efficacious prayer."

--Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection

"Richard Carr's ten-line Imperfect Prayers are not religious poems. They are late-night cries for mercy, meditations on the spiritual truths of grocery shopping and dental procedures, and maddened love letters to the creator of constellations and children without limbs."

--Tania Runyan, author of Simple Weight and A Thousand Vessels

Reviews and Features

Reading as a Writer: Imperfect Prayers

This blogger review praises the Job-like "'I' vs. 'God' struggle Carr depicts" in the arc of each poem. "Imperfect Prayers challenges the reader in a more personal and intimate way than Carr’s previous collections. It’s that kind of poetry collection that can yield insights with each successive reading. Carr’s images are to savor, his use of English reveals the language’s true power in words. I highly recommend Imperfect Prayers...." Read the full review in Anatomy of Perceval.

About the Author

Richard Carr grew up in Blue Earth, Minnesota, and now lives in Minneapolis. His honors include the Washington Prize for Ace, the Gival Press Poetry Award for Honey, and the Vassar Miller Prize for Mister Martini. He has had an assortment of odd jobs in restaurants, big box and small town hardware stores, book and newspaper print shops, and on farms, as well as house painting, cabinet making, ice rink grooming, and one summer filling sunken graves in a cemetery. As a teenager, he wanted to be a concert pianist. His cat's name is "Fur" Elise, and his goldfish are called Aria and Goldberg. In college he majored in philosophy. At one time, he could recite a hundred digits of pi. He once hitchhiked to California. His car is a Jaguar XJ8. He's been in three motorcycle crashes. None fatal. You can find out more about Richard on his website.